A 100-year-old man is being investigated on suspicion that he served as a Nazi camp guard and took part in executions during the final years of World War II.
This was first reported on by the German paper BILD on November 22. On Thursday, Dortmund Senior Public Prosecutor Andreas Brendel told The Jerusalem Post that the contents of the BILD report are true but declined to provide further comment.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office in Dortmund, Germany, alleges that between December 1943 and September 1944, the man was involved in killings while serving as a guard in Stalag VI A prisoner of war (POW) camp in Hemer.
The former guard is now 100 years old; however, there is no statute of limitations for murder. Prosecutors are still investigating whether there is sufficient evidence to charge him.
The POW camp in Hemer held over 200,000 inmates between 1939 and 1945. About 24,000 were murdered by guards or died due to inhospitable conditions such as overcrowding, poor sanitation, and diseases such as tuberculosis.
Most of the prisoners of war were from the Soviet Union, but there were also Polish, French, and Belgian prisoners.
The legal landscape for prosecuting former guards shifted in 2011 with the conviction of John Demjanjuk, a former Sobibor death camp guard. Prior to his conviction, the courts had required evidence of direct involvement in the atrocities committed during WWII.
Since then, several former concentration camp guards have been found guilty of being accessories to murder, on the same basis as Demjanjuk.
In 2020, a 93-year-old former concentration camp guard was found guilty of being complicit in the murders of more than 5,000 people held in the camp.
These cases set a legal precedent for charging former Nazi camp guards; however, with each passing year, the window for further prosecutions narrows.
Eighty years after the end of WWII, time is running out to convict former Nazi camp guards for their involvement in the crimes carried out during the war. Most of the former guards who are still alive are at least 100 years old.
Although the number of suspects in Nazi crimes is rapidly dwindling due to old age, prosecutors are still working to bring individuals to justice. Many cases have been abandoned in recent years after the accused died or became physically unable to stand trial.
In 2021, prosecutors determined that a 96-year-old alleged former camp guard was unfit to stand trial. Josef Schuetz, a former guard who was sentenced to five years in prison in June 2022, died less than a year later at the age of 102.
An alleged former guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp died earlier this year, before he could face court charges of complicity in the murder of more than 3,300 people.
The man currently being investigated for his involvement in the murders at the POW camp near Hemer is 100. It remains uncertain whether the case will proceed before he is deemed unfit to stand trial.